


Invested

by nickel710



Series: streamlined [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bicycles, Cap Steve, Fluff, Hand Feeding, M/M, first I love you, modern!Bucky, not super sexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16095062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickel710/pseuds/nickel710
Summary: Concurrent companion piece to How Buzzfeed Helped. Essentially a bonus scene to that fic of Steve and Bucky's first I love you. It could be read independently without having read the main fic, but there will be some things that don't make complete sense.This scene takes place during the time spanned in Chapter 13 of How Buzzfeed Helped.





	Invested

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NerdyFangirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdyFangirling/gifts).



> Thanks NerdyFangirling for being a fabulous reader and commenter. Hope you don't mind that I made it a gift to you, but it felt right.

About a month and a half into dating Steve, before even Hannah knew, Bucky loaded his favorite city bike onto the train with him out to Manhattan at six in the morning, before the sun had even finished rising. Once off the subway, he secured his helmet and backpack, then rode to Avengers Tower. There was a little plaza in front of the tower where he dismounted and settled onto a bench, then fished out his phone from his pack and dialed Steve.

“Hey Buck,” Steve said, voice muffled.

“Are you sleeping still, Rogers?” Bucky demanded, smiling at the thought. He looked up at the tower in front of him, wondered which floor Steve was on.

“Maybe,” Steve mumbled. “Why’re you callin’ me so early?”

“Aw, babe, you’re precious when you’re sleepy, I miss it,” Bucky teased lightly.

“You woke me up because I’m cute when I’m sleepy?” Steve asked, a little annoyed.

“Well, not exactly. And besides, I know it’s early but you also take 5 AM runs so this really isn’t that absurd,” he pointed out.

“Maybe today’s my day off,” Steve countered, sounding more awake now.

“I hope so,” Bucky said, grinning, “because I’m downstairs waiting for you.”

“What? At the Tower?”

“Well, I’m on a bench in the plaza. Can you see the plaza from your window?”

“I can,” Steve said, and Bucky could hear sounds of him getting out of bed and then a voice greeting him.

“Who—is someone there?” Bucky asked, confused.

“Oh, it’s—remember I told you about Tony’s AI, JARVIS?”

“Right! The computer that does everything,” Bucky said, remembering.

Steve chuckled. “Yeah. It’s his voice you’re hearing, because he talks when I ask him to do things like open the blinds or turn on the lights.” Before Bucky could reply, Steve said, “I think I see you! Wave.”

Bucky grinned up at the building and waved.

With a laugh, Steve said, “Yep, that's you. Hi, handsome.”

“Hi yourself, come downstairs!”

“Okay, I’ll get dressed.”

Bucky remembered why he’d come in the first place and sat up a bit. “Wait, don’t wear just anything. We’re going biking, so put on warm exercise clothes.”

“Biking?”

“Come on Rogers,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes. “We both know you haven’t taken that bike for a spin once since you bought it from me. Honestly, it was a terrible investment on your part. I’m just trying to make it worth it for you.”

Steve laughed. “Fair enough. I don’t have any other gear—”

Bucky looked back up at the building and hoisted his backpack into the air. “Gotcha covered, you just bring your bike and your beautiful ass down here.”

“Alright, hang on. I’m gonna hang up but we’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”

“We?” Bucky asked.

“Me, my bike, and my beautiful ass,” Steve quipped, then said bye and hung up as Bucky laughed.

Bucky leaned back on the bench and enjoyed the cold autumn morning while he waited, eyes closed and content smile on his lips as he turned his face upward into the sunshine. A few minutes of peaceful dozing later, a shadow passed over his face and he opened his eyes to find Steve smiling down at him like a dope, phone in hand as though he had just taken a photo.

Steve grinned at Bucky’s raised eyebrow and flipped the phone so he could see the screen, on which there was indeed a photo of Bucky reclining and enjoying the sunshine.

“Like a self-satisfied cat,” Steve said, smiling fondly as he turned the phone back around and looked at the picture. “I’m setting this to your contact photo.”

“Man you’re like a hundred years old and you’re better about setting contact photos than I am,” Bucky grumbled. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he stood up, then glanced around quickly to make sure there was no one watching before pulling Steve close by the drawstrings of his hoodie for a kiss. He held up his phone in selfie position and snapped one, then broke the kiss to look at his handiwork. If there was one thing that he had learned from having to maintain a good Twitter presence for streaming, it was the art of taking selfies.

The photo was perfect. Bucky set it as Steve’s contact photo and decided that while he was already editing the contact info, he would update his contact name from “Actually Captain America” to something less starstruck.

Steve watched over his shoulder as he did this, and looked up in surprise as Bucky finished typing the word “lover,” eyes searching Bucky’s face for a long minute before he leaned back in and caught him for another kiss. Bucky’s stomach fluttered as he realized he and Steve had never used the word ‘love’ before with each other in any form, but he knew. He knew that’s what it was. He’d known since the moment when, near the end of their co-stream at Jillian’s, Steve had first experienced getting hit by a blue shell in Mario Kart Wii and cursed him out so badly that Bucky had had to cover his mouth, explaining through his laughter that too much cursing on his stream would get him an adult-only rating from Twitch.

“Ready to ride?” he asked as they broke the kiss, blinking a bit to get his bearings back. Lord but this man did terrible things to him.

“Ready for anything,” Steve answered.

“Good,” Bucky said, stashing his phone into his bag and pulling out a few things for Steve. First, he handed him a lightweight biking mask, the kind racers used in rainy and cold conditions. It would cover Steve’s nose and mouth, and the reflective sunglasses he handed him next would complete a completely normal and acceptable mask. Then he gave Steve the extra helmet he had packed before securing his own sunglasses and helmet.

“To the park!” Bucky decreed, tightening the straps of his backpack and clipping it around his waist securely before mounting his bike and getting some momentum going with big, lazy loops around the bench he’d been sitting on while Steve followed more slowly with mounting his own bike.

“Been a while since I’ve done this,” Steve said a little nervously as he finally got his feet settled into his pedals. 

“Don’t worry, sweetums, I’ll go slow for you,” Bucky said in an overly indulgent tone.

Steve looked up sharply, and Bucky could imagine the irritated grimace on his face under the mask as he took in the mocking grin on Bucky’s face. “Try to keep up,” Steve snapped, standing on his pedals and taking off.

“You’re going the wrong way!” Bucky yelled after him, laughing. “The park is this way!”

* * *

They rode for miles, sharing the trails and paths with other early morning bikers and joggers, not yet late enough or warm enough for most tourists and families to have made their way to Central Park. 

By 8:00, Bucky signalled for them to stop, having found a reasonably secluded area where they could settle down for breakfast privately. They walked their bikes back to the trees and Bucky produced from his bag a tightly sealed plastic bag.

“For my next trick,” he said as if he were a magician on stage, then he opened the bag and pulled out a tightly packed, red-and-white checkered “blanket.” It was not a true blanket, or it would never have fit in his bag, but rather one of those micro-cloth towels that hikers and campers used, only about four feet by two feet, that was hyper absorbent and could be compressed down into a tiny, compact square. He shook it out and laid it down with a flourish, gesturing for Steve to have a seat.

Steve had taken off his mask and sunglasses, and grinned as he sat on the towel, taking up almost all of it. Bucky didn’t mind, though, because it meant he got to practically sit in Steve’s lap, which he promptly did. Then he continued to unpack the plastic bag.

Grapes, only a little squished. Banana bread he had baked himself… with Becca’s exasperated help over the phone (“How can you be so good at making homemade pizza, which is infinitely harder than banana bread, and be this panicked about a basic loaf recipe?”). A thermos of coffee joined the bounty from his backpack, and he waved his hand over the meal and said, “Ta-da!”

Steve pulled him closer so that Bucky’s back was tucked tightly up against his chest, then put his legs out on either side of Bucky. His arms were firmly around Bucky’s middle, and he buried his face into his neck, nuzzling at him.

“I’m a little sweaty,” Bucky pointed out with a wry grin, turning just a bit to cock an eyebrow at Steve.

“Don’t care,” Steve murmured into his skin. “Wanna eat you up.”

Bucky plucked a grape from the bunch and wiggled a bit until he had turned a few degrees in Steve’s arms and his clingy octopus of a boyfriend was forced to look up from where he had tucked his face. Bucky held the grape up to Steve’s lips, met his eyes, and gently pushed the fruit into Steve’s now-open mouth.

“Good?” Bucky asked breathlessly as Steve chewed, eyes still locked.

“Sweet,” Steve whispered after he swallowed. “Gimme another.”

Bucky took another grape and offered it up, brushing it against Steve’s lower lip teasingly when he obligingly opened his mouth again. Steve snatched the grape and Bucky’s fingers with a quick but gentle bite, letting his lips pucker around the fingers as he slowly pulled them back.

When he had swallowed the grape, Steve trailed one of his hands up Bucky’s side and to his neck, gently but firmly pushing Bucky’s chin upward while letting his wide palm lay flat along his now exposed throat. This was a thing Steve did, Bucky had learned: touching his throat and neck with something that would have looked like borderline aggression to an outside observer. They never talked about it, and although Bucky liked it for the intense feeling of being helpless in Steve's gentle grasp, he had begun to think that Steve liked it because he could feel Bucky's heartbeat and it grounded him. Regardless, for both of them it was an erotic, tender gesture, and Bucky felt that thrilling burn shoot down his stomach as the pad of Steve's palm pushed ever so slightly, barely pressure at all but unmistakably there, into his windpipe.

“You’re too good for me,” Steve whispered wonderingly as his eyes seemed to search Buckys face for answers to unstated questions. The tips of two of his fingers dug just a bit into Bucky’s skin as though looking for his pulse. If he could feel it, Bucky thought wildly, he might be concerned by just how rapidly it was beating. “You make me feel real, like… like I belong here and now.”

“I love you,” Bucky blurted out, breathless and rushed, as if the words were caged birds finally escaping his chest. “So fucking much.”

Steve moved his hand up into Bucky’s hair, gripping into it and pulling him close for a hard, heated kiss. He tasted like grapes and Bucky distantly thought about how Steve would taste after drinking wine. After a minute, Steve broke the contact and said hurriedly, “God, I love you too, sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging—”

Bucky chuckled deep in his throat and turned all the way around, pushing Steve down onto his back into the grass beyond their tiny blanket and straddling his hips before leaning over him, hands rucking up his shirt and over the smooth planes of muscle there, to kiss him again. And here was the flipside of the hand-on-neck gesture; Steve succumbed to him so quickly, pliant like putty, agreeable to anything Bucky said, at the slightest show of dominance. With the memory of those powerful hands so recently on his throat, it was a singularly heady sensation to feel and see Steve surrender so easily.

“We are definitely going to get in trouble for public indecency if this goes any further,” Steve panted when they broke apart next.

“I don’t mind,” Bucky breathed, pressing eager lips into Steve’s neck above his sweatshirt’s collar. “Come arrest me, officer. My love loves me back. Literally nothing could bring me down right now.”

Steve laughed, then pushed Bucky off of him and sat up. Bucky whined but let himself be moved, sitting back on the ground and allowing Steve to settle so that their knees were touching but otherwise they were apart. They ate the grapes and banana bread, rehydrated with plenty of water and some coffee in between playful banter.

When they finally got back on their feet and packed away their things, Steve righted his bike from where he’d left it in the grass and grinned at Bucky. “Best investment I ever made,” he said, patting the bike’s seat.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have other scenes/ideas you'd like me to write from this little AU, just leave a comment. No promises but I like having prompts to poke at so I'll probably write at least some of them.
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting!


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